How are you treated by people?

How are you treated by people? Do you repaetedly feel used? Do you find other people taking advantage of you, or not respecting you as a person? Do people make plans without asking you and just assume you will go along? Do you find yourself in roles you dislike because everyone else in your life expects you to behave as you do?

These are some of the common laments I have heard from clients and friends who feel victimsed in multitudinous ways. My response is generally the same: “You get treated the way you teach people to treat you.”

If you feel abused by others’ treatment of you, then look at your own thinking and behavior, and ask why you have permitted or even encouraged the abuse you complain of.If you don’t make yourself responsible for how you are treated, you will continue to be powerless to do anything about it.

Just like Epictetus summed it up 2000 years ago:

“It is not he who give abuse that affronts, but the view that we take of it as insulting; so that when one provokes you it is your own opinion which is provoking.”

Your hurts come not from what others do to you, but fronm what you choose to do with their actions.If you change your attitudes and expectations about being hurt, then you’ll soon find the abuse terminating, and your victim status eliminated.